To understand this properly we need to go back to the record of creation.

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Genesis 1:6-8

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This continuous layer of water vapour (we would call it a cloud today) is the clue to the Flood’s main origin. Its purpose was made clear as the earth rotated. The vapour congregated thickly around the equator in obedience to natural laws and thinned out over the pole areas as the earth rotated. This partially blocked the rays of the sun where they were most concentrated, the equator, and allowed more through where they were needed, at the poles. Thus in a very simple way, all the earth’s surface was covered with a similar amount of life-sustaining energy and heat.

As a result, the climate of the world was very much the same all over. There were no icecaps, and animals and men were able to range all over the globe. Plants grew everywhere and there were no deserts or waste lands. The bodies of mastodons (or mammoths as some call them, a type of large elephant) have been found in Siberia near the arctic circle with the grass they were eating still in their mouths as they quickly froze to death. (Some of their meat has been fed to dogs once it has been thawed out.)

Because there were TWO "bright lights" (verse 16), one much hotter than the other, there were periods of bright light and soft light, called "day" and "night". This latter produced the "cool of the day" Genesis 3:8.

One of the mysteries the early astronauts brought back for us from the moon was the amount of molten material on its surface. This was evidence that its temperatures have been a great deal hotter in the past. For more information on this see the separate posting entitled "The Moon’s Surface".

One of the effects of this dual "sun system" was that the "cloud" of water vapour remained in position successfully. (Astronomers tell us that nearly half the observable star systems are in fact, made up of two stars, or suns).

In the creation the earth stood upright in its daily rotation and circled the sun at a constant 360 days per year. (The Bible uses an even figure of 360 days per year in its time prophecies.) Our Creator, who is so precise and tidy that He folded the grave clothes as He left His stony bed at His resurrection, could not have designed this world to rotate on a 23 ½ degree angle, nor with a 365 ¼ (approximately!) journey around the sun. Consider these verses:-

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Luke 24:12

Then arose Peter, and ran to the sepulchre; and stooping down, he beheld the linen clothes laid by themselves, and departed, wondering in himself at that which was come to pass.

John 20:2-9

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As an angel from heaven rolled away the stone and then sat on it (Matthew 28:2), another entered the tomb, and unbound the wrappings from the body of Jesus (Luke 24:2-4). But it was the Saviour's hand that folded each, and laid it in its place. In the sight of He who guides alike the star and the atom, there is nothing unimportant. Order and perfection are seen in all His work. He who caused one of His apostles to say, "Let all things be done decently and in order," 1 Corinthians 14:40, follows His own advice.

As we have seen, the material for the Flood, the cloud of water vapour, was put in place as a protection, somewhat similar to our ozone layer and the Van Allen Belt which still exist today. But later the water vapour became the agent of destruction. How?

My thought is that the long-lived people who inhabited the world before the Flood did what our scientists did in the 1920’s. They interfered with the physics of nature and somehow AFFECTED THE SUN AND THE MOON!!!

I don’t know how they did it, but I do know that someone did, and the pre-Flood people fill the bill better than our loving Saviour.

As a result the moon went out completely, and the sun diminished greatly in strength. Temperatures plummeted, the mammoths and other animals died and froze suddenly, and chaos began. The power to hold the water vapour in place was gone and most of it fell as rain. The combined effect of the water and the geological upsets that occurred threw the planet off balance and slowed it down. The water then formed the great oceans of the world and we began to have what we consider to be a "normal" night and day, and greatly fluctuating seasons. And after it was all over its affects were felt on men’s lives - they began to die much younger. (See Genesis 11.)

No. He didn’t do it as men would do it! With malice aforethought. With intent to eliminate. Not even with tears in His eyes! He is a Saviour and not a destroyer. There is only one who bears THAT title in the Scripture and that is the destroying angel who rebelled against God’s government. And he was behind the men who caused the Flood.

Jesus blames Himself because He put the water vapour there in the first place and made the laws that held it in place.

God gives us two promises that we should look at carefully. He says:-

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Isaiah 60:20-21

Your sun shall no more go down; neither shall your moon withdraw itself: for the LORD shall be your everlasting light, and the days of your mourning shall be ended. Your people also shall be all righteous: they shall inherit the land for ever, the branch of My planting, the work of My hands, that I may be glorified.

Isaiah 30:26

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Here He tells us that the sun will not diminish again as it obviously has once, not shall the moon stop shining of itself. Today the moon is only a reflector, but in that day it shall be back to its normal and God-given position. That "day" is defined as the time when all the people are righteous, and they have inherited the land. So that means the new world.

The other promise is that the sun will be seven times hotter!! We will certainly need the cloud cover back! And that will happen too. John tells us that in the new world there will be no great oceans.

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Revelation 21:1-3

And I saw a new heaven and a new earth: for the first heaven and the first earth were passed away; AND THERE WAS NO MORE SEA.

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Where will all the oceans be? Back where they came from, protecting the new world and allowing the original conditions to be resumed. A time when there will be no darkness as we know it, nor any extremes of seasons. A pleasant place all over. One of the prophets of old saw that time in a vision and tried to describe it for us, but fell far short of what it will be like.

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Zechariah 14:6-9

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Any comments?

Ron